Mystery Solved: The Villains Theme

In this blog’s introductory post, I pondered where the “daht daht dee DAAAA yat-dat-dat-dat-da.” tune came from. You know, that ditty you hear in old haunted house movies, or in cartoons when someone is sneaking around with ill intent.

The sample I cited then was this snippet from “Existential Blues” by T-Bone Stankus:

While this became ubiquitous in cartoons, TV shows and even videogames, the exact origin of the piece is unknown. Some of the possibilities include “Mysterioso – Burglar Music 1,” a 1913 piece by silent film composer J.S. Zamecnik, or simply the undated and anonymous “Villain’s Theme” which was used for many silent films. In all likelihood, it was a piece first composed for silent films and became associated with someone (usually a villain) sneaking around.

Its current, “canonical” form probably came about either because someone took Zamecnik’s piece, or a similar piece, and reworked it a little to avoid getting sued; or it may simply have coalesced into its current form through constant use over the years, with each use reinforcing the previous one, until it became the familiar form we all know.

So, we have a lot of uncertainty and some conflicting information. However, both items target a piece of music around 1913-1914 with a similar name. It’s entirely possible the tune dates back even further, but this at least gets us into the silent era of film.

ABOUT J. S. ZAMECNIK

John Stepan Zamecnik (1872-1953) was indeed a silent film composer. He studied under Anton Dvorak at the Prague Conservatory of Music before settling in the United States of America in 1899. According to Wikipedia, “In 1907, Zamecnik became music director of the newly constructed Hippodrome Theater in Cleveland, Ohio. When the Hippodrome commenced with the screening of silent films, Zamecnik began to compose music scores for them. They were published by Samuel Fox, whose company was the first to publish original film scores in the United States.”

The recent restoration of William Wellman’s Wings (1927), the very first film to win the Best Picture Academy Award, features Zamecnik’s original musical cues. He also worked on Cavalcade (1933), which also picked up the Best Picture Academy Award. Zamecnik’s IMDB page includes a very detailed list of where his work has been used — even today — and specifically which piece is being referenced. I spied “Mysterioso No. 1” among those cues, which may or may not be the same piece of music.

According to Wikipedia, Zamecnik also worked under many pseudonyms, including Dorothy Lee, Lionel Baxter, R.L. (Robert) Creighton, Arturo de Castro, “Josh and Ted”, J. (Jane) Hathaway, Kathryn Hawthorne, Roberta Hudson, Ioane Kawelo, J. Edgar Lowell, Jules Reynard, F. (Frederick) Van Norman, Hal Vinton and Grant Wellesley. (Sadly, none of those names were J. Bodewalt Lampe, the name from the B-Movie Message Board post. Otherwise, that would have been cool, no?)

ABOUT J. BODEWALT LAMPE

So, let’s look at Jens Bodewalt Lampe (1869-1929). Lampe was a ragtime composer, band leader, and performer. He was born in Denmark, but settled in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1873, where he was a member of the Minneapolis Symphony. He eventually moved to Chicago and then Buffalo, where he settled with his wife, had kids, and started composing.

My guess (and I stress that this is a guess) is that Zamecnik is more closely related to the “Villains Theme” than Lampe. It looks like Zamecnik piece (dated 1913) predates Lampe’s book (1914), and Lampe’s role as composer of the piece is never directly stated. It’s possible that there is an even older piece being referenced by Zamecnik’s music, but it nobody has stumbled across anything like that yet.

Plus, given the “Villains Theme” history of being used in early movies and films galore, it seems more plausible that it would have originated with an early film composer.

EXAMPLES

While researching this piece, I found some more examples of the theme turning up in pop culture.

Here is a straight-up rendition of the theme as played by Al Weber, on the album Silent Film Music:

18 comments

Hello, Frank Zappa used it in his song Zomby Woof (sic)
it comes after the guitar solo in all the live versions of the song (complete with villain laugh). Thanks for your investigations, we have been wracking our brains trying to find any info on this.
Hear it at 4:22 on this clip:

Wow. I was just going through this very search with the same how do you google “da da da da DAHHHHH dat dat dat da”? (how I would have spelled it)- I presented the problem at work. Of course everyone has heard it. Lot’s of men on the job and we came up with this. Thank you. For me it started listening to an Earl Hines recording of the Duke Ellington song “The Shepherd” on the subway. It’s about 10 minutes long but at about 7 1/2 minutes he plays that figure – which started the whole “WTF is that and where does it come from?” thing. So anyway it’s in that song.
I knew about the Sonics. It’s also used as the main theme of the Ventures song “Scrooge” from their Christmas album.
I know I’ve heard it in a Warner Bros cartoon somewhere. That search continues…

Oddly, my husband just asked this question this morning and i took up the challenge. And yes, the google search proved entertaining.. I finally got you using “music played when a villain comes in” Villain was the key. Thank you so much!!

Just a side issue but maybe interesting trivia. The ‘Al Weber’ Silent Music album was actually played by Mike di Napoli, a local pianist who made recordings for Synthetic Plastics. This New Jersey company put out LPs under a bunch of different labels, and would trade or license their recordings to other budget labels. The more times Di Napoli’s records were spread around, the more pseudonyms they would acquire. When this one appeared on Peter Pan CD (and I believe also downloads) it was in the ‘Al Weber’ incarnation.

i remember back in 1950,or maybe 1951, – my first visit to Chicago, anyhow – seeing a movie cartoon, I think a Terrytoon, featuring a cave full of bats, one of which played an elaborate piece of classical-sounding music on a huge pipit organ while the other bats danced to it. And in the middle of it the theme cropped up, as the dancing bats tiptoed a few steps in one direction, and at the blare faced the opposit way with one wing across their snouts Dracula style, then doing a little dance step in place to the descending notes, then repeating once. Don’t know if it was a real piece of classical music or just something written for the film.